Daily Archives: March 16, 2009

Recent Additions to the Resource Site

The Sourcing Innovation Resource Site, always immediately accessible from the link under the “Free Resources” section of the sidebar, continues to add new content on a weekly, and often daily, basis. Unlike many “resource”, “best of”, or “portal sites” that are abandoned almost as quickly as they are thrown together, the resource site is actively maintained (and dead links are removed on a regular, usually weekly, basis).

In fact, there have been over 50 resource additions in the past week alone, including:

The total number of unique, active resources exceeds the 2,200 mark, and breaks down as follows:

And includes the following recent additions, among many others:

Conferences

Dates Conference Sponsor
2009-Mar-17 to
  

2009-Mar-20

Governance, Risk, & Compliance
  

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA (North-America)

SAP
2009-May-18 to
  

2009-May-20

Front End of Innovation
  

Boston, Massachusetts, USA (North-America)

PDMA
2009-Jun-15 to
  

2009-Jun-17

National Retail Federation Loss Prevention Conference & Expo
  

Los Angeles, California, USA (North-America)

NRF
2009-Nov-1 to
  

2009-Nov-4

Canadian Public Procurement Council Annual Forum
  

Victoria, BC, Canada (North-America)

CPPC-CCMP

Webcasts

Date & Time Webcast
2009-Mar-19

14:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

Using Performance Metrics to Do More with Less: A 7-Step Action Plan for Operations Managers
  

Sponsor: PureShare

2009-Mar-20

10:00 GMT-04:00/AST/EDT

Spend Analysis Demonstration : The First Three Important Steps to Savings
  

Sponsor: Enporion

2009-Mar-25

8:00 GMT-07:00/MST/PDT

Financial Health of a Life Science Company Starts at Managing Rising Costs
  

Sponsor: QAD

2009-Apr-1

16:00 GMT-07:00/MST/PDT

Best Practices in Spend Management for Law Firms
  

Sponsor: Aderant

2009-Apr-8

8:00 GMT-07:00/MST/PDT

Explore Revenue and Margin Growth in a Recession
  

Sponsor: QAD

2009-Apr-8

8:00 GMT-07:00/MST/PDT

Measuring World-Class Finance Performance
  

Sponsor: The Hackett Group

Archived Webcasts

Original Date Webcast Sponsor
2008-Jan-1

00:00 GMT/WET

Turning Risk And Compliance into a Competitive Advantage QPR
2008-Jan-1

00:00 GMT/WET

Five Dangers to Avoid in Your ePayables Project — Ways to Reduce Risk and Plan for Success PurchasingNet
2008-Jan-1

00:00 GMT/WET

P2P Supplier OnBoarding: Finding the Best Approach for Your Organization PurchasingNet
2008 -Oct-22

00:00 GMT/WET

Building and Maintaining a Successful Quality Management System QPR

which are all readily searchable from the comprehensive Site-Search page. So don’t forget to review the resource site on a weekly basis. You just might find what you didn’t even know what you were looking for!

And continue to keep a sharp eye out for new content and even more new content categories which will be coming on-line in the future!

Market Realities and Mind Games in Technology Negotiations (Software Acquisition Insider Tips V)

By Vinnie Mirchandani

Abruptly end a meeting mid-stream to make a point? Make the salesman sweat at quarter-end to squeeze a few extra discount points? Scream emotionally that you are going to report their price gouging to the regulators? Yes, I have used all of these techniques and many more in the negotiations/background deal advice I have contributed to as a Deal Architect. And I’m not proud of any of them.

My ideal way of conducting a negotiation is identifying an empowered executive in each of the competing (finalist) vendors and “signaling” where the economics and t’s&c’s should roughly come in. I would rather finish the negotiations weeks before quarter end and have the grateful sales executive move on to some other negotiation’s set of mind games.

No, I am not a walk over. My “signals” are based on a continuous monitoring of market trends. If you read my Deal Architect blog, I am into disruptive vendors and economics and very critical of “empty calories” in the price and performance of many of the industry’s large vendors. And lest I under play the complexity of the deals — plenty of legal, procurement, financial and, of course, IT folks are typically involved — the “signals” I am talking about are not stuff you can communicate in a 140 character Tweet.

My two favorite negotiation tools — vigorous bid competition and emerging market benchmarks — apply broadly across technology sectors. I will bring in SaaS economics to play into outsourcing deals. Telecom early termination clauses into SaaS contracts. Cloud computing benchmarks of availability and recovery/response times when negotiating support expectations from on-premise software companies. E. European and S. American competitors when Indian competitors only expect to see their peers in competition. On my other blog, New Florence, I am constantly looking for innovations in technology that are a rich source for the “unorthodox competition” I like to bring to negotiations.

The one humbling principle I live by: implementing technology is exponentially more difficult than negotiating it. So, I am constantly pacing myself to get the negotiation out of the way of implementation. It breaks my heart to see some buyers delay a project for months for another 2-3% in savings which should be far offset by the benefits the implementation team could have leveraged in that time frame.

Of course, not every client I work with is willing to be that “innovative”. Often I am stuck with a short “approved vendor list” to run the bid with. Worse, when it comes to renewals, many clients hurt themselves by not considering any alternatives to the incumbent. Some clients have transparency requirements which make my “back-channel” conversations difficult.

And even more so, it is tough to find enlightened vendor executives who accept the concept of market reality. Many are trained to rotely repeat things like “we have never accepted that price point or legal clause“. Unbelievably, many will pull out their quarter-end, blue plate special when I have told them I want to be finished of the negotiation way before quarter-end. Often they will adopt the Letterman version of “stupid salesman tricks” I have written about before. Others will take advantage of your offer to debrief why they lost the deal to try and claw their way back into the deal.

But when the deal is allowed to be driven by market realities more than mind games, I can tell you magic happens. It’s like a well fought chess game. There are rules and time constraints and each side is civil (at least somewhat) to each other.

But more importantly, both sides walk away feeling they won. Or at least tied. And us negotiators can scurry on out and let the business folks get on with making their magic with the technology they just bought.

At Gartner, and since with his sourcing advisory firm, Deal Architect, Vinnie Mirchandani has negotiated or advised clients on over $ 5 billion in software, offshoring, hosting, telecom and other technology and BPO contracts.